Example of WindowBlinds Layer Blending
Friday, September 5, 2008 by Island Dog | Discussion: OS Customization
In case you missed the news the other day, WindowBlinds 6.3 and SkinStudio 6.3 betas were released via Impulse and Stardock Central the other day. One of the most notable features was the layer blending feature, which opens up a bunch of creative possibilities for skinners. It allows you to create some high quality skins using layer blending, which saves some time and trouble. Layering in SkinStudio was a great feature, but it has now been enhanced by using features like Multiply, Screen, and Overlay modes.
Neil provided some images for me, and I wanted to post them to show you exactly what layer blending can do.
The first image here is an existing skin, with no layer blends at all.
These next two images are the same start menu. One has a layer blended on color pixels, and the other is blended on greyscale pixels. This was also done using the Multiply mode. All that was done was taking two tiling images and adding them in tiling mode as new layers.
For more information about WindowBlinds and SkinStudio, visit the websites below. If you don’t already have an Object Desktop or subscription, you can also get a special bundle with both WindowBlinds and SkinStudio included.
Reply #2 Saturday, September 6, 2008 5:31 AM
I've allways wanted to do a Cow skin. but the problem has allways been the titling of the cow pattern. Now, this appears to address that issue. 
Reply #4 Saturday, September 6, 2008 5:44 PM
hmmm i kind of like the way that start menu looks in pic2 
Reply #6 Saturday, September 6, 2008 6:35 PM
Seems there are a lot of things new in the recent SKS6 update.
Thus with this and all the others we are really going places!!!
Reply #7 Tuesday, September 9, 2008 12:27 PM
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Reply #1 Friday, September 5, 2008 12:15 PM
I should point out that both the pictures use three layers in total. The normal layer plus a layer for greyscale pixels and another for coloured pixels. Both the pictures use the same texture for coloured pixels but different ones for greyscale.
If you want to simulate that remember to put the layer to impact coloured pixels as layer 1 and the one for greyscale pixels as layer 2.
If your texture can tile then it is really easy to do and WBs automasking feature saves so much time.